'Bay Area Bites' is part of KQED's Blog Authors Collaborative. Blog contributors and commentators are solely responsible for their content. If you're interested in writing or contributing to a blog on kqed.org, email us with your idea.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Drinking Game: CocktailSmarts

I'll come clean, this post is a total self-pimp. Wendy told me I had to write it at some point, so given that my deadline fast approacheth and I don't seem to have another idea in my head, I'm just going to give in to peer pressure and abject show-offiness.

You may have noticed that I haven't been around as regularly as some of the other fine BABbers. (Or you might not have noticed that at all, in which case, you can just continue ignoring me completely.) I have a really good excuse for my absence. I've been drunk.

Okay, not exactly, but I have been working hard on a bunch of projects and there's one in particular that I'm thrilled to announce has finally come to full fruition: CocktailSmarts. It's the latest cool product to come from the ladies of SmartsCo and guess who wrote it? Moi! Look there, you can see even my name on the spine if you look really hard -- so very thrilling. When explaining CocktailSmarts to people, I've described it as a "book-game-thing," but it's really a cocktail trivia game you can use to test your cocktail IQ, as well as a resource of lots of new and classic cocktail recipe.

But hey, this isn't totally self-serving! Buy up oodles* of CocktailSmarts for everyone on your holiday gift list and look as suave as James Bond doing it. Funny I should mention James Bond, because you can learn cool stuff about him in CocktailSmarts as well. For instance, did you know he didn't only drink shaken not stirred vodka martinis? It's true! To quote myself:

Though moviegoers associate 007 with a specially prepared martini, the licensed-to-kill ladykiller drank many things between the pages (and sheets) of Ian Fleming's novels. Bond has been known to drink a Black Velvet (Champagne and Guinness stout), and in Casino Royale, he sips a cocktail of Campari, sweet vermouth, and soda water -- code name "Americano."

See how a little knowledge is a drunk thing?

CocktailSmarts' sleek Art Deco design really dresses up a coffee table, it's a great holiday party game, and it makes a great stocking stuffer. For...really wide stockings. And here's a little bonus for suffering through this shameless post, if you order it from SmartsCo and enter "Stephanie" as coupon code when you check out, you get 15% off the entire order. So, even if you want to get WinePassport or WineParty or any of the other fun products at SmartsCo, you will get that same discount. See how generous I am when shilling my book-game-thing?

*Technically, an "oodle" is more than five but less than fifteen. Over fifteen and you're in the "scads" territory.